Never is a Promise
by speshulduck
Summary: i promised never and i lied.


title: never is a promise  
  
author: duck  
  
rating: pg-13  
  
summary: i promised never and i lied.  
  
author note: olivia's turn to face the character death that i use to get around writer's block.  
  
disclaimer: i use for fun and angst, not profit. not mine.  
  
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We swore once that we'd never leave each other. No matter how hard we fought, we'd never let the other one do something stupid, never get reassigned, never die. Any number of promises that ultimately weren't up to us to decide. We were lying to ourselves and each other if we thought we had that much control over what happened to us. This is New York, we're cops. It's a deathtrap every day.  
  
I stare blankly at the dark wall of my apartment. I have his badge clutched in my hand against my chest. Its edges dig sharply into my skin, but I can't feel the pain of it. I feel a wetness and I realize that the corner has snagged against my thumb. My blood slowly drips onto it, mingling with his blood that's already there. I wasn't there when he got shot. I wasn't there for him. If we hadn't split up to find the suspect I would have been able to protect him. I promised I'd never let this happen to him, and now it has. I promised never and I lied.  
  
He was stubborn as ever, right up until the moment he died in my arms. I'd heard two shots and the suspect had come barreling out of the room, smoking gun in hand. I knew. Right then I knew. He saw me and raised his gun, but I'd already fired and he dropped to the ground. I called for an ambulance as a ran into the room in which I knew my partner lay dying.  
  
The world slowed as I forced myself to not believe it. Elliot had promised to never leave me; he wouldn't die. Would not. I was running but I wasn't getting anywhere. They say your life flashes before you before you die, but I experienced mine there. I was three and my mother was telling me she'd never wanted me for the first time that I could remember. I was five and alone in kindergarten. I was ten and the boys were teasing me because I was so tall. I was seventeen and a man was breaking my heart. I was twenty-three and seeing my first dead body. I was thirty-two and terrified of meeting my new partner.  
  
I was thirty-eight and finding him nearly dead on the floor of a crack house, his blood spilling like a waterfall. My gun and my cell phone fall from my hands. It is my blood that drips and pools on the floor, as surely as if I were the one who was shot. I collapse to my knees next to him, whispering his name, whispering for forgiveness that I know I will never give myself.  
  
His clear blue eyes are dimming now, without the quality that is so intrinsically him. His voice is silenced by the red that bubbles through his lips. I know he sees me; his eyes have connected with my own. A lifeline, I silently hope. Stay with me, Elliot. I try to find the wound, but there is so much blood.  
  
I feel his finger trace my cheek. A lifetime of love is in his eyes. My hands frame his face as I kiss him, unable to speak. I pull away and his eyes are wide and sightless. A smile plays around the corners of his lips, frozen in eternity and bathed in blood. I pull in a deep breath, shuddering with the force of it. My arms cradle him against me, pulling tighter as I begin to rock back and forth slowly. It is me who still lays dying, my heart ripped from my body.  
  
I come out of the shadows of my memory to find his badge held tightly where he was. The funeral was today. The cops that were there, they came to me. They tried to comfort me. They practically ignored his wife. For the first time since his death I felt something other than rage; I felt compassion. I sat down next to her and the twins both crawled into my lap without asking. One arm went around them, the other around Kathy's shoulders. She sobbed and leaned into me, drawing comfort the way Elliot and I used to do all the time. I didn't cry.  
  
It was a brief moment of human contact in my lonely world, but now I'm left here in my apartment, staring at the wall. Letting the dark get to me the way it did when I was a child. I can see shapes in it that move, creep closer. The boogieman's out to get me again. Just a little shot, he says. It won't hurt a bit.  
  
I heft the weight of my gun that I hold in my other hand. There are some things in this world that I can live with seeing. The horrors of my job have never affected me like this before. This is different. This is a wholly encompassing depression that I can't shake and I don't have anyone left to pull me out of it. I slide the cool metal of the muzzle down my cheek, tracing the path that Elliot left on my skin. I dig it into the soft tissue under my jaw, desperately hoping to feel the pain. I feel nothing.  
  
A knock at my door startles me. I almost squeeze the trigger it startles me so badly. I realize I am shaking, convulsing with the effort to feel anything. I put my gun down on the table in front of me, reverently placing his badge next to it. I cross the room slowly, hoping whoever is outside the door will go away before I get there. I brace my forehead against the wood before asking who it is. The reply surprises me. I expected one of the guys, probably Cragen. But I open the door to admit Kathy instead.  
  
She steps inside hesitantly, eyes widening involuntarily as she strains to see in the complete darkness. My own eyes narrow in the bright light that spills in from the hallway before I shut the door. I turn on a light out of courtesy to her; my eyes are already adjusted to the dark. She takes in my appearance in one glance.  
  
"You haven't been crying." It's almost an accusation.  
  
"No." I have no need to explain myself to her.  
  
"I thought of all people you would feel something," she says. I hear hate in her voice. I never understood why she didn't like me. I was no competition for her husband's attentions, and it certainly wasn't my fault our cases took him away so often. I suppose on some level I do understand really. I was always the voice on the other end of the phone that Elliot ran off to, but he'd had partners before me.  
  
"I'm feeling pretty dead right now," I say, not letting off the dark chuckle I'd love to give. If only she knew the double meanings. Kathy considers me for a moment and I know that if she were Elliot she'd get it right away. But she's not.  
  
"Were you having an affair?" The question startles me, the same way her knock had. It is not what I was expecting.  
  
"How can you even ask that?" I am confused. Didn't she know him better than this? "Elliot would never have done anything like that." For all their arguing, he'd genuinely loved her and his marriage vows were sacred in his heart. Didn't she know that?  
  
"I was always so resentful of you because he would drop his family to go to you," she confessed bitterly. "I thought you were giving him something that I never could."  
  
"What could I possibly give him that you couldn't, Kathy?" She doesn't answer me. "He was always just doing his job. Elliot was without a doubt my best friend, the protective big brother I never had. He was never a lover."  
  
"But you loved him, I can tell."  
  
"Of course I did. It's a natural part of being partners with someone for so long." I am struggling to find the words to explain it to her. "You've mistaken a platonic love for a romantic love, Kathy."  
  
"He could never love me the way he loved you." I sigh deeply. In her grief she refuses to understand. I see tears forming in her eyes. I do the only thing I can do: I surrender.  
  
"If that's what you want to believe, then I can't stop you." She bows her head and turns to go. Maybe one day my words will have an effect on her, but I know they will not for now. She looks for someone to pin her feelings on, and the closest target is me. I can accept this.  
  
She is gone and I shut the door behind her, turning the light off again as I do. I am back in my dark world, alone and unfeeling. I have crossed the room slowly again, to resume my place on the couch. I can see the light from the window reflecting off my gun.  
  
I just want to feel again.  
  
[end]  
  
(you decide for yourself what happens. and no, i will not write anything else in either of my character death stories.) 


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